We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Saint Chevelle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Saint thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?
I feel that I grew up very misunderstood and I’m not 100% sure how many people can relate to what I’m going to say but I’m positive that I can’t be the only one that feels this way. I was born into a family that had lived and spent their entire lives in Mexico. When I was born I was apart of the first generation of my family to be born in America. so I believe that the mentality of a traditional Mexican household never really escaped from my parents when I was born and therefore I grew up with very untraditional values in this country. nothing too out of the ordinary, but it felt like I was living in two different worlds depending if I was at home or if I was in school or say just out and about. when I was home, it was all Spanish speaking only and when I was at school, it was all English speaking only. So I had a hard time trying to relate or identify with either side because I wasn’t really sure who I was supposed to be. not to mention my family could be quite judgmental at that time, so if my Spanish wasn’t as great as theirs, then I was often criticized for it. And if I try to use my Spanish in school, then I was criticized for it because that wasn’t what language was necessary for the curricular. So I really didn’t know what to relate with, but I ended up finding myself feeling at home whenever I had attempted to learn how to write music and how to express how I was feeling without having to meet anybody’s expectations. I feel that a lot of us who were born in America after coming from such traditional Mexican values, have a hard time identifying with our background because it feels that when we try to except where we come from we’re often criticized for it because we don’t meet the traditional look of those before us, and at the same time if we don’t embrace our background and heritage, then we’re often compared to being just like “ everyone else in america “ so I’m just very fortunate to have found music as a way to express my own experiences and stories from my life because I would’ve found it very difficult to try to describe my experiences to those who couldn’t relate to it, or didn’t understand where I was coming from
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
my name is Steven Arredondo-Rodriguez but most people who have heard of me, have more than likely heard the name Saint Chevelle. I’m a singer, songwriter, rapper, live performer, and overall a student of life. my journey started when I was eight years old and had watched the movie “notorious” on a bootleg dvd. My older brother used to buy tons of bootleg movies and sell them for a profit so he had introduced me to this movie at an extremely young age but I can’t say I don’t appreciate it because that movie ended up really inspiring the direction my life would go. Like I stated before I wasn’t really sure whether to lean into the traditional Mexican values of my family or lean into the world that I now live in. Should I take pride in who my parents wanted me to be or should I go out my way to try to understand who I might be. and even as a young child, I always had these thoughts, so when I was introduced to this movie about this kid, who wasn’t really sure what he would do in life and ended up following his dream of becoming a professional rapper. It really struck something in me even till this day talking about it 16 years later. Once I saw that movie, it seems like I dove in headfirst into everything I could about hip-hop and the rappers that came before me and the rappers that were popping off at that time. I started free styling and attempting to write music and would tell my older brother how I had dreams of going to California to meet with Eminem and sign a record deal which sounds hilarious till this day, but for some reason I feel that I’m closer to that dream now than I ever was before. I put out my first record when I was 19 and had the expectation that the moment I drop the music, I would be one of the biggest artist in the world, because I felt that I was so talented with the way that I was able to rap but I quickly realized that there was so much more to this industry, and that the industry is always changing so at some point I stopped worrying so much about trying to be famous and focus more on trying to make music that I would be proud of. And now that I have followed the direction I feel like I’ve received way more attention for my art than I did when I had first started. I also feel that when I started making music, I was quickly labeled as someone that was trying to be like an old school rapper and it really bothered me because the last thing you would want to hear is that you or music isn’t what people currently want but that’s the beauty of making your own music is that it doesn’t matter what other people want what matters is that you make the music that you strive to make. I think I Kinda hindered my career by listening too much to what people wanted me to sound like rather than what I wanted to sound like. I wanna make music that tells stories, or that gets people, motivated or excited for whatever reason. The type of music that could make you feel like you could eat a whole vacuum cleaner without any utensils. I don’t know what I could say that shows what truly sets me apart from every other artist because we’re all such individuals, everyone genuinely is their own person. I feel like if I sit here and try to explain to you what makes me different than everyone else It would only make me sound like everyone else. what I will say is that if you’re reading this, you should definitely give my music a chance because you never know what you’ll end up liking you might find this song that you’ve been looking for your entire life and may not even know it, or you might find some thing that is so relatable to you, that it seemed almost impossible to find someone who has gone through the same experiences that you have. I’m not necessarily sure if I have one moment in particular that I could say I’m extremely proud of. I could tell you that I have tons of moments that I’m not proud of but I think that’s just the double edge sword of life. I will say that if I’m proud of anything, I’m proud to see how much people connect with my music and how much it resonates with them or how impressed they tend to be whenever they hear it and I feel that I still haven’t done enough in my career to say that I’ve had a successful career, but then again, it’s up to us to measure success for ourselves. If I’m proud of anything else, I’m just proud to have met such fantastic people who have been willing to give me the time of day and try to help me out in anyway possible and attempting to make this dream become a reality. I’m more thankful and proud of the individuals that I’ve met and worked with than anything. I’ve done as an individual personally.
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
One of the dumbest things I think I’ve ever seen people get involved in. Honestly, I think it just goes to show how things only value as much as other people value them. Why people were out here spending $10,000 on a photo of a monkey is beyond me but like I said, we only value things as much as others value. Then I think we have a problem with a sheep mentality in this country, where everyone would rather have the opinion that’s most agreeable with then an opinion that they came up with themselves. actually ironically now that I’m thinking about it I myself wanted to create an NFT circled around Pops the cereal because at that time they had planned on going out of business or discontinuing it somehow so I was like since everyone is buying these random photos of random objects let me just make one and see how far I can get and honestly it feels like those types of scams haven’t stopped, except nowadays it’s all cryptocurrency I mean a genuine question why does Iggy Azalea have her own cryptocurrency? Doesn’t that just seem like it’s a Scam? It surely looks like one to me
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
The Art Of Seduction By Robert Green
The Tao Of Wu By The RZA
The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*uck By Mark Manson
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/chevelleisgod?utm_source=linktree_profile_share<sid=6879a507-d438-4721-9142-98cfa3f4615a
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chevelleisgod/profilecard/?igsh=ZmU5aTRjNnpnaDd0
- Twitter: @chevelleisgod
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@chevelleisgod?si=mfD0VX8q-o6VllZy
- Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/PqmF5NPtrEpPFj226
Image Credits
@hcbwyd
@peepthephotos
@victorjreed
@gr3m7in
@solo.produccion